If I Had A Million Dollars
by unlikelyRLshipper
Summary: D/L. Post-ep for 9.11, so spoilers for that episode. Danny and Lindsay talk about what they'd do with a million dollars, among other things.


**Hello again! Anybody sick of seeing me yet? Seriously, this is my fourth fic in six days, even I'm getting tired of me! :P**

**Alright, so if the title didn't already give it away for you, this is a post-ep for 9.11, so spoilers ahead for that episode. This one took on a life of its own as I was writing it, and this is what came out. I hope you'll like it.**

**The title is borrowed from the Barenaked Ladies song of the same name, but if you don't know the song that's completely fine because it has absolutely nothing to do with the story! The title popped into my head as I was watching the episode and thinking about a D/L post-ep and it made me chuckle, so I just had to use it!**

**Oh, just FYI: any correlation between a certain passage about halfway through this and something that happens in 9.13 is purely coincidental. :)**

**Enjoy!**

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**If I Had A Million Dollars**

"Hey Linds?"

"Yeah babe?" Lindsay Messer called out distractedly, her attention still on the TV and the football game they were watching. There were only 42 seconds left and the New York Giants were down by six points.

"What would you do with a million dollars?"

"What?" It had been nearly a week since they'd been in the break room on lunch and they'd seen the news report about the ten people in the city who'd been anonymously gifted with a million dollars each. She'd only heard Danny talk about it once while making that crack about giving out their address to this mystery benefactor for their own million dollar cheque.

"I just wondered what you would do if you were suddenly given a million dollars."

"It would never happen," she declared resolutely.

"But if it did?"

As Lindsay watched the Giants lose possession and thereby squander their chances for a last-minute comeback, she turned off the TV and finally focused on her husband beside her. Just as she was about to insist once again that there was absolutely no chance of her becoming an overnight millionaire, she noticed the serious look on Danny's face. Clearly he'd been thinking about this quite a bit. She was intrigued by his interest so she decided to play along, if for no other reason than to see _why_ he was so interested.

"OK, off the top of my head, I would pay off the last chunk of our medical bills, put a down payment on a nice house out of the city for us, put a good chunk of it into Lucy's college fund, and whatever was left over I'd put into the bank for safe keeping, the market's too risky for me to invest in."

"Why am I not surprised, ever practical with your hypothetical million dollars," Danny teased.

"Fine, just for that, I'm using my million to hire the best divorce attorney in the city, taking your sorry butt to the cleaners and then I'm going on a shopping spree with Lucy. Oh, and I'll take her to Disneyland _and_ Disneyworld because she'd always wanted to go and so have I." As she finished speaking, she stuck her tongue out at Danny, which caused him to reach out and drag her into his side, giving her a smacking kiss on the cheek just to annoy her even more.

"Not gonna happen babe, you're not getting rid of me, doesn't matter how much money you have."

"That's what you think." Despite her annoyed tone, Lindsay let herself settle into his side, never one to turn down a chance to be close to Danny.

They stayed quiet for several moments before Danny spoke again. "There's not something you'd like to do if you had the money to do it with, something for your family or for yourself?"

The silliness from only moments before disappeared instantly and it was enough to get Lindsay to lean back from Danny's embrace to see his face. He tried to hide it from her, but she could see that his interest in what she'd do with a million dollars was anything but casual. He wanted to know what she would do with the money because he wanted to compare with what he would do with a million dollars. With that knowledge in hand, she took a minute to think about the question before answering.

"Even if I tried to give my dad or my brothers some money, I know they'd never take any from me – too proud, the entire lot of them. And I'm fine with what I have, I can't think of anything I'd want to do for myself if I became rich. The only thing I could think of doing would be to set up some type of scholarship at my high school in memory of my friends and Sarah – she graduated a couple of years before I did and was working at the diner to save up some money for college."

When she finished speaking, Danny tightened his arm around her shoulders and leaned down to kiss her temple. Ever since her return from Montana almost two months ago, she'd been slowly opening up more and more about her friends to him. It was still difficult for her to talk about them, but she seemed a little less burdened each time she shared something of Kelly, Caroline and Lucy with him. He was still trying to think of what to say next when Lindsay's lips brushed the underside of his jaw and then she spoke.

"Now it's your turn: what would you do with a million dollars?"

Just as she suspected, he'd been thinking about what he would do with a million dollars for days now – from more frivolous pursuits, like trying to invest in a sports team of some kind just to be able to call himself a (partial) owner of _X_-team, to more mundane ones like getting a new microwave and getting a washer and dryer so they no longer had to waste all their pocket change on the crappy machines in their building's basement laundry room – all these ideas and just about everything in between. Over the past few hours he'd finally settled on a list of things he'd like to do with his hypothetical windfall, hence why he'd only brought it up with Lindsay now. He knew she'd turn the question back on him the minute he asked it, so he wanted to have his answer ready for the inevitable counter-question.

"Well, I agree with you on the medical bills, Lucy's college fund and the house outside the city – I'd like a place with a garage so I could finally rescue my bike from my parent's place."

"I almost forgot that you still had that. You barely ride it anymore now that you no longer store it in the living room. Why didn't you sell it?"

"Sell it?! Babe, that bike is a classic, one that I put a lot of work into over the years, but more importantly that bike holds some special memories for me." Pulling back and looking down at her, Danny gave her a pointed look and waited until she remembered exactly what he was referring to. He knew the second she did because she suddenly averted her eyes and turned bright red. How could he ever get rid of the bike where one night she took him for the ride of his life, without ever leaving his apartment?

"OK, so our new house would definitely need a garage for your bike," she admitted, not needing to see Danny's face to know he was grinning rather smugly. "Maybe we'd have room for our own car too, I've always wanted an F-150."

"This is my million, babe, not yours – you already had your chance to get the truck of your dreams. Plus, there's not a lot of room in a truck cab for a family, especially a family that might be growing in the future."

The topic of having more children was one that the two of them were still discussing. They were both open to having another baby but they were trying to figure out the logistics of it: whether they had enough money now to start trying or whether they should wait longer, whether they should really move out of the city or whether they could make it work with two kids in their current apartment. The last time they'd talked about it, though, it had turned into a bit of an argument between them because even though Lindsay knew the financial components of this decision needed to be considered, she was tired of _only_ taking about money.

Not wanting to get into it again with him, she re-directed his attention back to her original question. "Anything else you'd like to do with your million, something for yourself or for your parents?"

Danny could see exactly what she was doing and since he really didn't want to get into another argument with her about having another baby, he took the out. "I'd like to go to a few more Yankees games in a season, so I'd probably spend a little on that. I'd like to give some to my parents too, maybe give them enough so they could finally go to Italy just like my mom's always wanted, but they'd probably refuse the money just like your family would. And I'd really like to take you on a honeymoon – after we had a proper wedding, of course."

"What?!" Lindsay wasn't sure if she'd heard him right.

"Yeah, if I had a million dollars – or even like twenty or thirty grand – I'd give you the wedding you didn't get to have the first time and then we'd actually have a honeymoon."

She looked him in the eyes, still thinking that he was messing with her or something, but she quickly realized that he was completely serious. Suddenly, it all clicked in her head – this was what he was so preoccupied with, why he was so interested in what she would do with a million dollars. He thought that he had to give her a 'proper' wedding, that their elopement wasn't enough for her?

"Danny, why would we need to have a wedding, we're already married. The documents are all the same, and all legal, no matter how you do it."

"I know that, but…"

"But…" she repeated, encouraging him to finish off his thought.

"…but you deserve better than what you got," he admitted in a rush, his voice little more than a whisper.

Just as Lindsay was about to retort and set the record straight for him, he flew into a hurried explanation.

"I should've been standing at the end of a long aisle in an itchy tux, nervous as hell and praying for you to still show up. You should've been in a beautiful white gown, walking towards me on your dad's arm with a bouquet of daisies in your hands. We should've been with all our family and friends as we vowed to love, honour and cherish each other in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, til death do us part. We should've had a photographer there to capture it all, from our first kiss as husband and wife to our first dance to cutting the cake where you would've given me a glare to stop me from even thinking about smashing the cake into your face and then you would've done exactly that to me, to you throwing out the bouquet and me with my head up your skirt trying to get the garter off your leg. And then at the end of the night, the two of us, exhausted but so happy, would've left the last diehards at the reception and headed up to our room to celebrate all night long.

"That's what should've happened Linds, not me springing a proposal on you at city hall and standing in our everyday clothes while we were married by a clerk who was way more interested in getting the $25 money order. We should've celebrated our marriage that night, not had to go back to your apartment so you could finish packing for your trip to Montana the next day and then had to call it an early night because you were almost seven months pregnant and the baby was tiring you out."

When he finished with his impromptu speech, Danny closed his eyes, afraid to look into Lindsay's eyes and see her disappointment, to see that after admitting it, she agreed that their wedding should've been so much more than it was.

"Danny, look at me," she said to him in a gentle voice, wanting to make him understand just how wrong he was. When he proceeded to ignore her request, she resorted to what always worked with him:

"Daniel Messer, you look at me right now!"

This time he followed her orders, and though her tone left no room for argument, her eyes were still so soft and kind on his, which only confused him all the more.

"Babe, have I ever given you any sort of indication that I was upset that we didn't have a 'traditional' wedding?"

"Well, no, but…" he started to say before Lindsay cut him off abruptly.

"And do _you_ regret that we didn't have a wedding like everyone else?"

"No, the only thing I'd like to change about how we actually got married would be to have our parents there to see it." He stopped to think for a moment before adding, "And maybe not having it be a surprise for you, or right before you left the city for a month."

"OK, we can agree about the last bit, I would've liked more time with my new husband before leaving as well. The rest of it, though, I wouldn't change – not the surprise, not only having two witnesses there, not going to city hall, even with the cranky clerk. Our wedding was perfect just the way it was."

"But…but I always thought…" He didn't have any idea of what to say to that. Ever since they'd got married, he'd periodically thought about how he'd do things differently for Lindsay. He'd never once considered that she wouldn't want to change anything.

"Danny, I was never one of those girls who dreamed about my wedding day – I could've cared less about table linens and flowers and centrepieces and wedding favours. If anything, I was thinking about my future husband, what kind of man he'd be and how I'd know he was the one for me. Honestly, I would've preferred going to city hall over doing the big wedding if I'd been given the choice, and I think it fit us as a couple."

"I never thought about it like that, I just always figured that you had been like every other little girl."

"Who got a buck knife for her birthday as a kid, really Danny? And anyways, that assumption in general is rather silly to begin with, not every woman spent her childhood planning her wedding down to the littlest details."

"Alright, alright, I guess you're right, I didn't think that one through so well. But I guess that in the end I lived up to your imagined future husband," he stated optimistically, happy to at least have something going in his favour.

"Um, actually you aren't anything like the guy I imagined in my head as a child."

Danny's jaw dropped. Clearly he was wrong about everything today. Just as he was about to make some off-handed comment, Lindsay spoke again.

"He wasn't real, Dan, no man could've lived up to the image I created in my head as a little girl who knew nothing about love in the real world. He was a fairytale, and in the real world, fairytales don't come true. I'll admit that you're different from any of the guys I dated before, but I think that's exactly the reason why we're where we are today – I never realized that I needed a different type of guy until he came into my life. Honestly Danny, the only thing that was useful from my childhood musings was the idea that I'd know who the right guy for me was when I looked at him and saw my future play out in his eyes. I know that it sounds silly – trust me, I thought it was too once I actually started dating, right up until it happened to me. You wanna know when it was?"

"Probably when I proposed to you the second time, the one that you actually said yes to?"

She smacked his arm for the wiseass comment before starting to shake her head. "Nope. Actually, that was a bit of a trick question because it didn't only happen to me once – it happened three times."

"WHAT?!"

Lindsay sat back and watched as Danny's eyes nearly popped out of his head. She let out a small chuckle when he tried to say something more and his mouth only opened and closed again without making a single sound. Taking pity on him, she elaborated on her revelation.

"The first time it happened was in Montana when you tried to lead me out of that courtroom and I hesitated. When you turned back to me and leaned in to kiss me just as those photographers went flash crazy, I saw us in the future – a few years later and also us twenty or thirty years down the road – going in for a kiss only to be interrupted by someone or something, I never did see what exactly stopped us from kissing. When you asked me if I was OK as I drove us back to my parent's place, I let you think that I was still processing the end of the trial – which I was – but I was also trying to figure out what had happened in that moment. We were still in that slightly awkward stage of our relationship, where it wasn't clear yet if there was any potential for a long-term relationship between us beyond the attraction and the flirtation, and here I was seeing us together as a couple decades into the future. It scared me, but after we finally crossed that line weeks later, I started to let myself believe that it could happen.

"The second time it happened, I was so confused because I wasn't sure we'd have a future anymore. It was the morning after my rainwalk."

Danny nodded his head in acknowledgement, a little intrigued that it had happened during the worst period in their relationship. He wasn't at all surprised that the timing of it had caught her off-guard: though they'd shared a night of passion after she'd showed up unexpectedly, from the next morning onwards things became awkward between them, so awkward that a future together really did seem unlikely.

"You were making breakfast for me and when you turned around and caught me staring, all you did was give me a hesitant smile before turning back around to pay attention to what you were doing. That one look, though, and I was seeing us getting into fights in the future. Some were just little squabbles, others were screaming matches with one or both of us storming off. Then I saw the resolutions: both of us saying sorry, you bringing me flowers and giving me that same hesitant smile, me making you dinner as an apology, even one scenario where one minute we looked like we were going to kill each other and then the next we were tearing at each other's clothes and I shoved you up against a wall before jumping up into your arms and devouring your mouth. All those images were too much for me to deal with at that moment, so I just pushed them to the back of my mind and tried to forget them."

"I can't say I blame you for that," he admitted with a sad smile. "I'm kinda afraid to ask, but when did it happen the third time?"

The easy and beautiful smile that quickly came to Lindsay's face immediately put him at ease. "That one was my favourite because by that time, I was ready to accept what was happening with us. It was when we were in the lab together and I was busy working while you were reading a comic book to my belly. I was watching you the whole time, even though I pretended like I was focused on my work, entranced by you doing something so intimate and loving where you could've been interrupted at any moment. After you kissed my belly and just before you went off to look at your results, we locked eyes for a moment and I could see you as a father, playing with our child and showering her with your love. Then the picture changed and I saw a little boy running over to an older you - you picked him up, hugged him tightly and gave him a kiss on the cheek and he said "Hi Grandpa" to you. It was so sweet, it blew me away."

He couldn't deny that that image was something he hoped would happen in the future. "So that's what finally convinced you to marry me?"

"No, not really. By then, I already knew that when – not if – you asked me to marry you again, I'd say yes. Seeing that last glimpse into the future, it only furthered my resolve to be with you for the rest of my life. Looking back on it all now, I think that there was a part of me that knew before we even got together that we were going to last. I was just afraid of letting myself put faith in that future when the present seemed so uncertain. It was only after we started putting the work into us, when we stopped screwing around and worked at our relationship, that I let myself finally accept what the universe had been trying to tell me for close to two years: I'd already found the right man for me."

Danny could do nothing but stare at her, having no idea how to reply to the number of things he was learning about their relationship tonight. Despite his shock, there was a part of him that couldn't help but think that it would've been nice to know back then that she would eventually agree to marry him. He easily remembered that time, where with one rejected proposal already under his belt, he couldn't seem to get past the belief that she was probably going to say no again, regardless of the fact that they'd been the best place together for the first time in their relationship. Even though he'd told her he was tired of being afraid, standing outside the city clerk's office, that had been the only thing he was feeling.

"Danny, please say something – you're starting to scare me a bit."

It took him a few moments to process what she'd said, with that underlying tone of hesitance in her voice, but eventually he said the most obvious thing to come to his mind. "Why have you never told me any of this before?"

"I always knew that one day I'd tell you all about what happened to me back then, but I never found the right moment before today. And, I was pretty that once I told you, you'd be overwhelmed, just like you are right now. But I'm not the only one who's been holding back here: how come you've never mentioned wanting to give me a 'proper' wedding before?"

"For the same reasons that you just gave, I guess. And a part of me was worried that you'd misunderstand what I was trying to say and start to think that I regret marrying you, which, just to be clear, I never have and I never will."

"Oh Danny, I know that, I've never doubted that about you." Just to make sure, Lindsay leaned up to catch Danny's lips in a fierce kiss. Pulling away again, Lindsay wanted to put her own worries to rest. "You're not mad that you're only just finding all this stuff out now, are you babe?"

"No, I'm not mad Linds – shocked and overwhelmed and struggling to process it all, yes, but mad, no. I'm glad to know all this about you and about us, though."

"Yeah?"

"Of course." He gave her a warm smile before adding, "And now I can use that part of my million dollars to invest in a minor league baseball team or something."

It was Lindsay's turn to be the shocked one. "You're an ass, you know that?" She closed her eyes in annoyance, but soon found herself joining Danny in laughter. When it died out a few moments later, Lindsay felt Danny's hands frame her face and she reopened her eyes only to find his eyes staring back at her.

"Seriously Lindsay, thank you for telling me all this. It means a lot to me to know that you loved our wedding as-is and that you thought about our future even before there was an 'us' and even when we were very close to going our separate ways. It may not change what happened in the past, but it adds another layer to our story."

"You're welcome." She leaned up to give him a sweet kiss and when she pulled back again, she was smiling brightly at him. "So what should we do for the rest of the night?"

"I don't know. Is the Giants game over?"

"Yeah, I turned it off with about twenty-five seconds left."

"Oh. Did they win?"

Lindsay's eyebrows lifted up in surprise. "Babe, you've been sitting with me all game long. Did you see any of it?"

Danny gave her a sheepish look. "I was thinking about the million dollar thing, so no."

Shaking her head at him, Lindsay reached for the remote and turned on the TV again, managing to catch a bit of the post-game analysis.

"…Giants win with a down-to-the-wire touchdown. It wasn't like anything I've ever seen in my twenty years behind this desk: down six points with thirty seconds to go, the Giants lose possession of the ball, get it back by capitalizing on a fumble the very next play, and then a perfect throw by Eli Manning leads to a one-in-a-million catch in the end zone. All it took was one simple kick to put the game away for the Giants. That was an ending that will go down in history as…"

The sportscaster kept on talking, but Lindsay wasn't listening anymore. Never in a million years had she thought that the Giants could come back and win the game, but they did. If that feat was possible, she thought, maybe anything was. Even her and Danny becoming millionaires.

"Hey Danny, how do you feel about playing the lottery?"

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**Full disclosure: I only know the basics about football and the fact that Eli Manning is the quarterback for the NY Giants, so that's why the announcer/sportscaster dude is the most vague commentator you will ever see (or read about). He serves his purpose, but in real life he wouldn't last a day in that job!**

**I hope you enjoyed the story, and thank you so much for reading!** **:)**


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